(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
chmod — Changes file mode
Attempts to change the mode of the specified file to that given in
permissions.
filenamePath to the file.
permissions
Note that permissions is not automatically
assumed to be an octal value, so to ensure the expected operation,
you need to prefix permissions with a zero (0).
Strings such as "g+w" will not work properly.
<?php
chmod("/somedir/somefile", 755); // decimal; probably incorrect
chmod("/somedir/somefile", "u+rwx,go+rx"); // string; incorrect
chmod("/somedir/somefile", 0755); // octal; correct value of mode
?>
The permissions parameter consists of three octal
number components specifying access restrictions for the owner,
the user group in which the owner is in, and to everybody else in
this order. One component can be computed by adding up the needed
permissions for that target user base. Number 1 means that you
grant execute rights, number 2 means that you make the file
writeable, number 4 means that you make the file readable. Add
up these numbers to specify needed rights. You can also read more
about modes on Unix systems with 'man 1 chmod'
and 'man 2 chmod'.
<?php
// Read and write for owner, nothing for everybody else
chmod("/somedir/somefile", 0600);
// Read and write for owner, read for everybody else
chmod("/somedir/somefile", 0644);
// Everything for owner, read and execute for others
chmod("/somedir/somefile", 0755);
// Everything for owner, read and execute for owner's group
chmod("/somedir/somefile", 0750);
?>
Upon failure, an E_WARNING is emitted.
Note:
The current user is the user under which PHP runs. It is probably not the same user you use for normal shell or FTP access. The mode can be changed only by user who owns the file on most systems.
Note: This function will not work on remote files as the file to be examined must be accessible via the server's filesystem.
BEWARE, a couple of the examples in the comments suggest doing something like this:
chmod(file_or_dir_name, intval($mode, 8));
However, if $mode is an integer then intval( ) won't modify it. So, this code...
$mode = 644;
chmod('/tmp/test', intval($mode, 8));
...produces permissions that look like this:
1--w----r-T
Instead, use octdec( ), like this:
chmod(file_or_dir_name, octdec($mode));
See also: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.octdec.php BEWARE using quotes around the second parameter...
If you use quotes eg
chmod (file, "0644");
php will not complain but will do an implicit conversion to an int before running chmod. Unfortunately the implicit conversion doesn't take into account the octal string so you end up with an integer version 644, which is 1204 octalUsefull reference:
Value Permission Level
400 Owner Read
200 Owner Write
100 Owner Execute
40 Group Read
20 Group Write
10 Group Execute
4 Global Read
2 Global Write
1 Global Execute
(taken from http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/02/06/php_foundations.html)Windows has a very different file permission model to Unix and integrates them only minimally.
On Windows, all this function can do is to change the "read only" flag, which is turned on if $mode & 0200 does not pass.
i.e. it only checks if u+w is missing from the bitmask, and if it is, it sets the read only flag.
The executable flag cannot be set as Windows determines it based on file extension.
The write flag cannot be set as Windows determines write access based on ACLs, which are not integrated here.If you cannot chmod files/directories with PHP because of safe_mode restrictions, but you can use FTP to chmod them, simply use PHP's FTP-functions (eg. ftp_chmod or ftp_site) instead. Not as efficient, but works.